The 400 Blows

Synopsis

Angel faces hell-bent for violence.

For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.

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I think people overlook how hard it is to be a kid. All kids at one point feel unwanted, unloved, or uncared for. It's universal, which is why this movie is so incredible. It takes something as simple as a broken household and makes it for everyone, something anyone can relate to.

The acting and score in particular are outstanding. The cinematography is gorgeous, and you can tell it has inspired many filmmakers today. Many aspects of this film also reminded me of Mommy and I Killed My Mother, both Xavier Dolan films (which is a great thing). I honestly am in love with this film and it's true, brutal, and heartbreaking story.

How do you explain what it's like to lose yourself in a film? The 400 Blows describes it particularly well. Francois Truffaut was an expert cinephile, after all: sneaking into theaters via washroom windows, gravitating closer and closer toward the screen so that for a few hours his world was only moving images shedding diffused light on hundreds of faces turned up to the screen.

But perhaps Truffaut wasn't intent on forgetting the rest of the world when he started sitting so close to the screen; perhaps he was simply dealing with weakening eyesight. That would be quite like him and his work, anyway: mundane realities finding their way into cinema in a manner that renders them achingly poetic.

François Truffaut's feature film debut is a touching portrait of our adolescent years which beautifully captures the day-to-day activities we spent doing for hours despite it being deemed useless by our parents & teachers — the classes we bunked to go for movies or play, the teachers we loved to hate, and the many times we were 'disciplined' for the smallest of things.

The 400 Blows is my first stint with this director's works and the elegant manner in which he has unfolded this story before our eyes is sheer poetry. Set in early 1950s Paris, the film is an expertly crafted character study of a young adolescent who's often misunderstood by his peers and, after being left with no attention,…

This is now a favorite. Every shot of this film is a gorgeous gift, packed with warm, quiet wonder. The sparse musical theme is an utter delight.

I love the ending more and more each time I watch it. After being trapped in the endless urban cycle of mischief, rules, and misunderstanding, it's unbelievably cathartic to watch Antoine just run away from it all. Run, without any of the loud, confusing distractions of the city, just the soft sounds of birds chirping and the ocean breeze.

simple and sweet, this film was so feel good i loved every second of it . the cinematography and camerawork were something to take note of; the long one shot sequences flowed so nicely and everything was fit into place . the score was beautiful, it’s whimsical tone reminded me a lot of la la land . the opening sequence was beautiful, it was like a good short trip through parisian streets and it just made you feel happy .

everything about this was so comfy???? idk how to explain but wow this was such good cinema im in love

With Les 400 Coups, Francois Truffaut enters both modern cinema and the classrooms of our childhood. Bernanos's humiliated children. Vitrac's children in power. Melville-Cocteau's enfants terribles. Vigo's children, Rossellini's children, in a word, Truffaut's children - a phrase which will become common usage as soon as the film comes out. Soon people will say Truffaut's children as they say Bengal Lancers, spoil-sports, Mafia chiefs, road-hogs, or again in a word, cinema-addicts. In Les 400 Coups, the director of Les Mistons will again have his camera, not up there with the men like Old Man Hawks, but down among the children. If a certain arrogance is…

this movie has such truth and pain to it, which i believe can only be achieved so perfectly through the eyes of a child. being a kid is so incredibly hard. and so trivialized. we are expected to do as we're told, have no say in anything, and show respect when we are not respected ourselves. we always have to change to fit the standards of adults, and why? we haven’t even gotten a chance to find ourseleves and we have to contort in a different form thats more accepted by our elders? what an incredibly difficult concept to grasp, because it shouldn’t be this way. kids get the worst end of the stick, we are poked and prodded into…